Inside Llewyn Davis - it's all about the cat

Been away a lot recently and also the world cup's on, so I've either been abroad or drunk or watching football in place of watching DVDs / going to the cinema.  But with the world cup on hiatus last Sunday evening I busted out the most recent DVD that LoveFilm had sent me - Inside Llewyn Davis.  And now with work becoming boring again, there's time to write it up.

This is the Coen Brothers' most recent film, starring Oscar Isaac as the eponymous Llewyn Davis, it tells a short story of this folk singer's time in the 1960s New York folk scene.  The film considers a week in his life, a week in which he encounters various of his friends, travels across the US, loses and finds several cats, and plays folk music with various levels of intensity and success.  Davis is trying to make it as a folk singer, he was part of a small-time duo a few years ago, but his partner Mike killed himself a short time ago and Davis has been unable to find anything close to success since.  The film opens with him being punched in the face, awaking to find a cat on him and then gets odder from there.  Realising he is locked out of his friends' apartment, he takes their cat with him and goes about his everyday business of trying to bum money from his buddies and hating the fact that he plays music for a living.

As with everything the Coen Brothers do, there is a huge amount of subtext being thrown around in Inside Llewyn Davis.  On one hand the film is about the folk music scene of 1960s New York.  On another hand it's about how true art and beauty can often only emerge from some kind of suffering and pain, as is felt by Llewyn and everyone else in the film if the grey / brown colour scheme is anything to go by.

If you want to know what's really going on in this film, then you would do well to pay attention to the cat.  There are lots of theories out there on the internet that suggest the cat has an extra significance to it than simply being something that Llewyn has to deal with while trying to make his way in the world.  I wont reveal anything here, better to let you all try to work things out for yourself, but there are some nice metaphors for Llewyn and his life in his interaction with the cat.  Very arty.

My plan is to try to get back to the cinema next week.  I managed to miss the new X-Men film recently what with being away so much and the world cup being on, but there are a number of summer block-busters lining themselves up just now, starting with the new Planet of the Apes film.